Earthquake Video From Apartment in Van, Turkey

The above cameraphone video (via @stevesilberman) was taken from inside an apartment during the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Van, Turkey. It's titled, "VAN DEPREM SON DAKİKA," which, according to Google Translate, means "Van earthquake last minute." If anyone speaks Turkish and has a better translation, please tell us.

Reuters reports the earthquake may have killed up to 1,000 people, with many still buried beneath rubble. The general manager of Kandilli Observatory, Boğaziçi University's earthquake research center, told journalists at a press conference, "We estimate around 1,000 buildings are damaged and our estimate is for hundreds of lives lost. It could be 500 or 1,000."

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said that 10 buldings in Van collapsed, and a further "25-30 buildings were brought to the ground in the nearby district of Ercis."

The area suffered "more than 20 aftershocks," and Zulfukar Arapoglu, the mayor of Ercis, told television reporters, "We need tents urgently and rescue teams. We don't have any ambulances, and we only have one hospital. We have many killed and injured."

UPDATE: A commenter informs us "SON DAKİKA" means "BREAKING NEWS," so the video's title is: "BREAKING NEWS: Earthquake in Van."

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"Son dakika" may have two meanings:- "last minute/moment" - literally;- and "from the last moment" - so in that meaning we may translate it either as "the newest" (news, information, etc.) or "breaking news", dependently the topic.

The Turkish language is very hard to translate as many words and expressions, as the above, are ambiguous - you can't understand their exact meaning without an additional words, context or without asking the speaker an additional questions to be sure what he is talking about.

Good advice: do not use Google Translation tool for Turkish as it is not ablt to deal with so many suffixes and gives often very strange results.

In a week, unfortunately Turkish people having very unexpected and painful news. 26 soldiers death by PKK Terrorists and now a massive earthquake with plenty of death bodies.

Many groups of rescue crews are still working to save a life under the bricks and the amount of dead bodies are not pricise yet. For outsiders, it is going to be very hard tackling day because of the cold weather in Van but the news say that the government already started to provide prefabricated houses and thermal insulation systems and also health care services are in fully on the go...

This country helps to every other country in their history and still trying to help as much as they can... Hope they could get the same behavior from the others as they did...